by Adriane Del Torto
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| Corte d'Aibo, Monteveglio (BO) |
The partnership between IFAD and the Government of Italy is long standing. As part of this collaboration, the Italian Cooperative Model has been important in helping shape cooperative models in West and Central Africa, and Latin America through a partnership with Coopermondo, an Italian NGO created by the Italian Confederation of Co-operatives (Confcooperative). Coopermondo promotes socio-economic development in emerging countries on the Italian Cooperatives Movement model. IFAD has worked with Coopermondo through its country programmes in Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Togo, Columbia and Peru. In order to have a better understanding of Coopermondo and Confcooperative, a trip was organised to Emilia Romagna, the birthplace of the Italian Cooperative Movement to talk with some farmers and other cooperative members.
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| Donal Brown, AVP, IFAD, Giorgio Mercuri, President ConfcooperativeFederpesca President, Cooperative Caseificio 4 Madonne |
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| Milk processing to make Parmigiano Reggiano |
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| Barrels, traditional balsamic vinegar |
It would be impossible to be in the Modena area without paying a visit to the traditional makers of Balsamic Vinegar! We had much to learn on this. We visited the attic loft of a producer of Traditional Balsamic Vinegar from Modena, which is a very exclusive product requiring lots of patience and dedication to make: there is a minimum of 25 year’s aging to get a mere 30 100mL bottles of the vinegar.
After tasting Parmigiano and Traditional Balsamic Vinegar, it's time for lunch. And a special lunch it was – in a cooperative of course! At Locanda Smeraldi, Giusy and her team teach young people with disabilities to make traditional Italian dishes and how to manage a restaurant. Every day at the Locanda they serve between 150 to 200 people for lunch!
To digest a fabulous lunch, we went off to another cooperative, Kilowatt, a social cooperative run by a group of young people that renovates abandoned public spaces for use in social innovation, city farming, cultural activities and much more. They even have an outdoor kindergarten as well as a consulting company working on development projects and innovation incubators.In their suggestive 'sound house' - a renovated greenhouse with state of the art audio technology, we also met the founder of Local to You, a platform bringing agriculture cooperatives together as an outlet for distribution to consumers.
What we learned from this experience is that cooperatives in Italy do not limit themselves to farmers, but also to social organisations, such as the restaurant we had lunch in, banking services and even to areas such as healthcare and education.
The lessons learned from the Italian farmers are invaluable: you need to be more to be stronger. By being a member of a cooperative, farmers and other cooperative members get easier access to services needed to stay competitive such as quality control and certification of products, access to markets, credit and even some help on the administrative side – a model that very much reflects the needs and the request of farmers in the countries in which IFAD works.
After tasting Parmigiano and Traditional Balsamic Vinegar, it's time for lunch. And a special lunch it was – in a cooperative of course! At Locanda Smeraldi, Giusy and her team teach young people with disabilities to make traditional Italian dishes and how to manage a restaurant. Every day at the Locanda they serve between 150 to 200 people for lunch!
To digest a fabulous lunch, we went off to another cooperative, Kilowatt, a social cooperative run by a group of young people that renovates abandoned public spaces for use in social innovation, city farming, cultural activities and much more. They even have an outdoor kindergarten as well as a consulting company working on development projects and innovation incubators.In their suggestive 'sound house' - a renovated greenhouse with state of the art audio technology, we also met the founder of Local to You, a platform bringing agriculture cooperatives together as an outlet for distribution to consumers.
What we learned from this experience is that cooperatives in Italy do not limit themselves to farmers, but also to social organisations, such as the restaurant we had lunch in, banking services and even to areas such as healthcare and education.
The lessons learned from the Italian farmers are invaluable: you need to be more to be stronger. By being a member of a cooperative, farmers and other cooperative members get easier access to services needed to stay competitive such as quality control and certification of products, access to markets, credit and even some help on the administrative side – a model that very much reflects the needs and the request of farmers in the countries in which IFAD works.
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| Rossana Polastri, Director, LAC, IFAD; Camilla Carabini, Director, Coopermondo, President of Corte d'Aibo; Adriane Del Torto, Regional Programme Analyst, WCA, IFAD; Adriana Apollonio Deputy Permanent Representative of the Italian Representation to the UN Agencies in Rome; Giorgio Mercuri, President of Confcooperative-Federpesca; Donal Brown, Associate Vice President, IFAD |